


The Hunger

by zade



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anorexia, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Dissociation, Eating Disorders, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Prison, and then more hurt, forced eating, non-canon compliant, nothing about this is healthy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 00:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2328911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Season One.</p><p>On the tray is a slice of what you assume is turkey, covered in thick (probably originally powdered) gravy, a large scoop of (probably also powdered) mashed potatoes, and a wobbling column of red jello, wiggling in a small, tan plastic bowl. You are starving.  Your fork is almost in your mouth when it hits you with the weight of cement truck. You can’t eat it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a sequel to Taste, but you don't have to read that to get this
> 
> warnings for: eating disorders, force feeding, prison, hospital stays, sex without explicit consent, therapy, cannibalism, disassociation, unhealthy relationships...probably some other stuff, let me know if I missed anything?

It occurs to you your first week in prison. You’re in solitary while they run psych evals, so really it’s just you and your thoughts (and the bars and the guards) and they bring you your lunch on a brown plastic tray like in elementary school. You are ravenous.

On the tray is a slice of what you assume is turkey, covered in thick (probably originally powdered) gravy, a large scoop of (probably also powdered) mashed potatoes, and a wobbling column of red jello, wiggling in a small, tan plastic bowl.

You are starving. Your fork is almost in your mouth when it hits you with the weight of cement truck.

You can’t eat it.

Here is how you rationalize it: meat is meat is meat (and what are humans if not meat); gravy is easy to make from any meat that drips (and humans carry more fat than many animals); when you were little your mom always made mashed potatoes with chicken stock (you can imagine, human stock); gelatin is just bone (human human human).

At first it’s just Garret Jacob Hobbs, the piece of Hobbs that burrowed his way into your chest and pulses with heart beat that says, eat it eat it eat it can’t waste any part mustn’t waste any part eat it eat it eat it but then like a howl Hobbs is replaced in your mind like a blinding flash.

You’ve tucked the napkin into your shirt before you’ve realized what you are doing. The setting before you, though sparse and underwhelming, is still flesh and your mouth practically waters with it. You remember how Abigail tasted, how Miriam Lass tasted, how you imagined Will would have tasted, how you would have peeled the muscles off his bones while he watched, fed him bits of himself, kept him alive as you ate more and more until he became nothing more than a sweet memory and warmth in your belly.

You come back into your mind before you have taken a single bite. You throw the napkin to the floor, horrified and sickened and crazy. 

You push the tray away.

You know that your empathy disorder is your own (unlike the hallucinations and loss of time and all the other anxieties that made up encephalitis), but knowing the mind of the Chesapeake Ripper and knowing the mind of Hannibal Lector, and knowing now that they are one and the same is almost too much for your fragmented mind to fully conceive of.

You are not sure if it’s the memory of the tang of your blood or the memory of the food he gave to you. Still, you do not eat.

The weight slides off your body quickly at first: the slight curves of fat above your hips, the fullness of your thighs and ass. The muscle goes next, until there is only the barest strength that still clings to your bones like a lifeline. It hurts to move, to breathe, to think.

You do not eat.

At first hunger gnaws at you, biting into your stomach like little claws and your throat so dry it rattles with each breath. You don’t want to drink either, but reluctantly you swallow gulps of water which sit heavily and squirm like maggots twisting through your gut.

You are pretty sure there is no way to get water from humans (except tears and urine and blood and none of those taste of water).

The staff start bringing you food, even though they are not supposed to. Fruits first, bruised apples and blood red oranges and soft squishy peaches that you gobble down and then vomit back up. They start bringing you things in packages, mass produced and so artificial they can hardly be considered food. You gorge yourself on stale pop tarts and crumbled oreos but even these don’t stay in your stomach for more than a few minutes.

They keep bringing you meals on a plastic trays.

You do not eat.

You can count your ribs. You run your fingers across them, feeling them, reading them. The ridges are Braille, and you imagine they read his name, that he has laid his claim across your very bones. His name upon your chest juts out like a mountain range, and your belly is a valley, concave and taut like a drum.

They make you see the prison psychiatrist. (You still don’t eat).

The first few sessions, he asks you questions. You don’t answer. He offers you food, not tasteless prison mush or the food the guards sneak to you (which he tells you he knows about), but actual food like eggs and bacon and perfectly prepared sandwiches. It’s tempting (you’re tempted but you’ve been tempted before and look where that ended) but you don’t say a word and you do not eat.

He is bland and unassuming and you sit across from him in your green jumpsuit and try not to sweat under his gaze. He does paperwork and you cradle your aching gut with your trembling arms. He warns you that eventually the prison is going to start treating this like a hunger strike and shove food down your throat.

He says to you, one day as he is sitting and filling out paperwork, with a beautifully plated chicken breast sitting before you, “I understand why you don’t want to talk. It sounds to me like you haven’t had the best luck with therapists.”

It is, you think, perhaps the understatement of the century. You laugh and laugh and when they come to drag you back to your cell you are still laughing and you can barely breathe for it.

You don’t even try to eat.

It’s a Tuesday when the warden decides enough is enough. They come collect you from your cell, take you to a conference room, and strap you to the chair. You are stuck tight to the metal chair, bound with thick padded cuffs and a strap around your waist and chest.

They shove food into your mouth, hold their hands over your mouth while you choke and chew and vomit. There are fingers squeezing closed your nose like a vice and you are forced to swallow and swallow and swallow. They step back, watch you as you loll in the chair, feeling weak and feverish and oh so nauseated. You are a boat, trapped alone on the ocean, and the tide has just picked up.

You spew up all over yourself and the guards and the doctors. Your throat burns, your abdominal muscles are sore and tight, and there is a sheen of sweat on your brow and staining your crotch and underarms with its moisture.

It’s been 17 days since you last ate. They send you to the hospital in handcuffs.

They handcuff you to the bed and they insert an IV into your arm and it stings without any fat to shield your raw nerves. The IV provides you with fluids and nutrients and while it does not put any meat on your bones, it eases slightly the burn in your limbs and your belly. The room is white and the sheets are white. You feel like you are dirtying them with your skin, already so stained by him. Your pores leech out the remnants of his touch and it is black black black. The hospital staff are confused when you do not try to tear your IV out with your teeth.

The prison psychiatrist comes to see you. “The staff are surprised you’re so compliant with the IV.”

They let you suck on ice chips. Your throat is almost moist. “I don’t want to die,” you say, and your voice is flat. It is (probably) the first words you have spoken to him, but you aren’t really keeping track.

“Oh no?” He looks neutral, like you’ve been talking to him for weeks, and he raises an eyebrow in a very casual arch and the expression reminds you so much of Hannibal that for a second you think you might lose your ice chips all over the front of your hospital gown.

“I just don’t want to eat.”

The hospital staff brings you a bowl of broth and a jello cup, this time green. 

You do not eat.

Hannibal writes a letter the next day. It is sent directly to Jack Crawford’s office, written in Hannibal’s distinctive spidery cursive and covered in his fingerprints. Within in the letter is a detailed description of how he killed Abigail Hobbs, how he framed you, how he fucked with you, how he made you rely on him and tore your mind to grey shreds of biological matter.

Jack Crawford gets you released the day after. There is argument about your mental competency based on the fact that you are still not eating, but Jack’s eyes are clouded in guilt and he pulls all the strings he has access to and that same day has Alana bringing your dogs over to your old house, and Jack gives you a copy of the letter, and you are wearing an outfit that is not made of a single piece of fabric.

Alana makes you toast, smoothes your hair like you are a child in the midst of bad dream. Your whole life is a bad dream. You do not eat the toast she makes or the Chinese food Jack brings, or the beer that the lab team sends over (Hannibal made his own beer, too).

You do not eat any of it.

Beverly, who knows you better and seems to wordlessly understand what you need, brings over chips and cookies and soda filled with ingredients neither of you can name, that taste chemical and like aspartame and are sickening. You stuff your face until your stomach is burning and you feel ill, but the sensation of fullness is alien and so very good.

Your body is too weak to climb the stairs to your bedroom. Beverly tucks you into the couch and brings you a sealed bottle of water, which is perhaps the most comforting thing anyone had ever done for you. 

Beverly smiles. “You be good now.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a sealed packet of dog treats, and offers one to Winston. 

He clearly does not like them as much as the ones that Beverly used to make for him, with chicken and rice that were crispy and fragrant, but you are so wordless grateful that Beverly is considerate of you to the point where it includes your dogs and you realize you are crying fat tears when she sits down next to the couch and touches her forehead to yours.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she tells you softly, and you believe her because clearly she has more a grasp on what’s going on with you than you do. “Everything is going to be alright now.”

You wake up the next day sitting at your kitchen table, an entire stack of pancakes resting before you. You have not made pancakes since your college days. Your hands and the edges of your nails are crusted with dried pancake mix. The pancakes are cold.

You are terrified. You thought you were done losing time.

For a second you are sure that there is no way you made them, that Hannibal has somehow snuck back into your life and connived to feed you pancakes. This, even to your admittedly crazy self, sounds a little bit more tin hat than the fantasies you usually entertain.  
You try to eat the pancakes, but they taste like ash.

That’s because you made them wrong, you think. It’s not your voice. Your hands are already rolling up your sleeves in perfectly even folds. This is a skill you have never had. You close your eyes, you move about the kitchen with ease—it is your kingdom. You will make the food and Will will eat it. He will be complicit in your actions, whether he knows it or not. He will eat of your crime. In this way you will claim him. This is your design.

When you open your eyes there are more pancakes. You are Will graham. You collapse in the kitchen and cry until your eyes run dry.

Beverly and Alana and Jack call you. You do not answer. They stop visiting.

Hannibal comes the next day. Of course he does, you think. You have microwaved a Hot Pocket, and it is sitting on the table before you, dripping and vaguely gelatinous (and despite the fact that you cooked it a full three minutes longer than it said to, it is almost certainly frozen in the middle), but appetizing because there is nothing even vaguely food-like about a Hot Pocket. 

“And who is winning the staring contest, Will?” he asks you, and you jump to your feet—you hadn’t even heard him come in—but your body is still stiff and weak and you fall back onto the couch and he smiles at you kindly, like he used to, and it is at the point that you begin to realize that he is probably a figment of your imagination.

You look from him to the door, which is still locked, bolted and chained from the inside. You would have heard him break a window. Okay, you think, and your breath slows. I am Will Graham, you think. I am safe. This is just my mind playing tricks on me.

“I don’t want you here,” you tell him (yourself) and reach out to begin to eat the cooling and hardening Hot Pocket, which is getting less and less appetizing by the minute. 

You haven’t hallucinated in nearly a month.

You take a bite of the Hot Pocket and then spit it out again, suddenly terrified that the hallucination is a sign that Hannibal somehow snuck into your house and replaced your ordinary pizza-ish Hot Pockets with pizza-ish-human-containing Hot Pockets.

“Will, you are too slight,” he tells you and brushes your cheek with his hand. “Let me cook something for you.”

His touch raises goosebumps along your neck and arms. No, not his touch. Your touch. You raise your hand to your face although you are yourself for the moment, your hand feels almost the same.

“Will,” he (you) says softly.

“No!” You yell at your own mind and back away from him (yourself) to the far end of the couch.

It isn’t the first time you’ve hallucinated his touch, nor the most poignant. You are worse off than before.

He picks your coffee mug off the floor and sets it on the coffee table. No, you did that. You did that when you first sat down with your Hot Pocket.

There is honest concern in his eyes, the kind you thought you saw back when all he was was your extremely helpful therapist, before you saw the murder and thirst in his eyes. “I want to help you.”

“No, you don’t.” You are still too weak to make it up the stairs, so you curl into yourself like a pill bug or a turtle, wrapped up and protected from the outside world, with your flesh still exposed.

Hannibal is in your head. You can’t protect yourself from that.

One of the conditions of your release is your continued diligence in seeing the therapist you worked with in prison. You speak to him more, now, the words pouring more easily out of your mouth now that you are a free man, vindicated by the words of a man you almost certain you love and hate in equal measure.

“I saw him last night,” you tell the therapist, whose eyes suddenly widen.

“Where? Did he speak to you? Are you all right?”

Since Hannibal’s exquisitely written confession (the copy of which you have read every night since you were released), the Chesapeake Ripper has killed eight more times.

“In my house. I think—I mean, I know he was a hallucination.” Your hands shake and press them together between your knees, forcibly holding them together. You close your eyes, equal parts embarrassed and hurt by the antics of your own mind.

“Ah,” he says, nodding. “That makes much more sense. Agent Crawford let me know that they had picked up his trail in Florida. They think he’s heading out of the country.”

“I see.”

The therapist, who you always thought was dull and as uninteresting as he was uninterested, clearly has a brief moment of insight into your fractured mind. “Your encephalitis is gone, Will,” he tells, zeroing in on your worry like a spotlight. “You had a brain scan last week. I was there for the whole thing. I can order another one at a different facility if it would help ease your mind.”

You nod absently, but you are fully planning on taking him up on that. “But I still saw him. He couldn’t have actually been there—?”

Your therapist leans towards you nodding, and lets his hands fall between his knees. It’s a psychological trick that you know, mimicking a pose to convey interest and support, but despite this you find it comforting. “I would say it’s highly unlikely he was there. But even without the encephalitis, you experienced a major trauma, and some residual symptoms are not too unexpected. Did he say anything to you when you saw him?”

You clear your throat loudly, twice. “He wanted to cook for me.”

“Then maybe this is your mind’s way of trying to come to terms with what he did to you. Your negative association with food comes directly from your fear of the food he served to you. Perhaps your brain is taking on his persona to show you that food can be trusted by negating the association you feel with him.”

When you leave, he shakes your hand, and holds onto it for a long moment. “If you hallucinate him again, let him cook for you. See if you can eat it.”

When you get home, he is waiting for you, crisp and prim as ever, the dark parts of him folded neatly into a beige suit. He looks extraordinary, like he always has, but he has a cultured dullness you hadn’t noticed until now.

“There are going to have to be some rules,” you tell him (yourself) very sternly, standing before him with your arms crossed. You are still weak and your legs are already beginning to cramp and shudder.

“I’m not going to sit by while you kill yourself,” he says, his face drawn into a grave expression. There are more crow’s feet by his eyes than you remember, but you think you did that yourself, because it’s comforting to think that he cares enough for you that he would worry. Or, you suppose, that some part of your brain is working hard to keep you breathing. 

“You can cook for me.” His face lights up and he is heading quickly towards the kitchen before you stop him. “But nothing that you bring.” You don’t want food appearing in your house with no memory of purchasing it. He turns around slowly, and regards you carefully. “I’m going to go to the store and buy food and you can cook it for me. You can tell me what ingredients you want, but I am going to get them.

“I’m going to watch you cook. If I am not in the kitchen, you are not in the kitchen.” You think about his hand on your face (his hand on your cock and in your body and probably almost entirely in your mind) and you continue. “You’re not going to touch me. No matter what. You are not going to complain. And if you make food and I can’t eat it, you will not say a thing.” You know—you know—that he is just a hallucination, but you can’t help but add, “And no killing people. If you kill another person, it’s off.”

Hannibal regards you again. He looks almost proud, which makes something spasm in your chest painfully. You hope you are not having a heart attack. “Very well, Will. I am agreeable to these terms.”

“Tomorrow,” you say, and collapse on the couch, because it has been a very long day and your limbs are still skeletal and ache with every movement.

He is there when you wake up. 

“Good morning, Will,” he says to you, and his voice sounds sweet and smooth like honey. He is wearing a different suit than the day before, but it is one you remember, you’re favorite one. Of course he’s wearing your favorite suit. “I have compiled for you a grocery list.”

You are at the grocery store. You realize that you don’t remember getting there and your mind is suddenly consumed with the fear that you have lost time again, that there is still swelling in your brain, that you are dying, that Hannibal is your mind’s way of letting you know that your death is imminent.

You buy everything on the list, some dog treats for Winston, and a bottle of whiskey and a chocolate bar for yourself. You are not a man without vices.

Your stomach is still small and tight, but Hannibal cooks you eggs and toast and bacon, which adorns your chipped fiestaware with crisp hash browns and a precisely cut avocado half. 

You watched him cook it all. He stood in your kitchen like a dancer, sleeves rolled up, an apron tied primly about his middle, every movement precise, practiced, controlled. It looks exhausting. When he places the heaping plate before you, your stomach rolls, but you take a deep breath and then a small bite.

It is delicious. He sits across from you and watches you, blank faced. He is studying you as you try your hardest not to suffocate on the food he has so lovingly prepared for you (or rather that you prepared for yourself). 

“Is it good?” he asks you, gently, like you are a tiger who at any moment could bolt or pounce, or like he is completely unaware of his cooking prowess. It taste homey. It tastes delicious, but it tastes like the food you have always made for yourself.

You realize that you are crying. Your face feels hot and wet, your skin stretched too tight, and when you take a deep gasping breath it burns your lungs like the air is frigid. You nod and continue eating frantically, before your body decides it is too much food and rebels.

“You should eat more slowly,” he says, and so you do. 

Even when Hannibal is in your head, he stills molds you effortlessly. You are clay, you are putty, you are a marionette and Hannibal is an artist.

His kills attest to that.

He watches you eat and you have to physically restrain yourself from licking the plate. You remember prison, how bitter you felt towards him, how he had you eating out of the palm of the hand, how your own flesh tasted, how much you imagined he would like it, like watching it, like the taste of you.

You keep the vomit down.

You keep eating.

You keep pretending he’s real.

He breaks a rule and presses a chaste kiss to your lips. You let him. When you open your eyes, he is gone.

Your therapist is pleased with your progress. Your limbs are growing steadily sturdier, your ribs lined with fat and fingers beginning to resemble the correct appendages rather than the husks of tree branches in winter.

You’ve told him about the food (and he admits that it is strange that the hallucination has not dissipated) but you have not told him about the kiss.

“Agent Crawford would like you to consider joining the FBI once again, to help him search out Dr. Lector.”

You laugh, and for the first time in months it doesn’t hurt your ribs. “Are you going to tell him about my persistent hallucinations or should I?” you say, because you don’t want to say “no.”

Your therapist smiles at you, a real wide smile. He genuinely likes you, you have found, since you have emerged from your walking coma. You think it should make you more nervous than it does, but unlike the smooth veneer of Hannibal’s façade, your therapist is fractured and messy and his hair is never in the same position twice. You cannot imagine that he is hiding more than an affair (you’ve stepped into his mind once and were blown away by the sheer mediocrity and banality of his life).

“I think it would best if you talked to Agent Crawford about your progress. While I know it is not out of place for me to report to your superior officer about your state of mind, you are intelligent and articulate, and very near to sane, and I think it would be beneficial for you to speak to him as an equal.”

Sitting in your car, you call Jack. You tell him you are eating and about your therapy, and when he outright asks you if you are ready to return to work you don’t tell him no, but you do tell him not yet, and then you tell him about your visions of Hannibal. He sounds unsettled, but you do not blame him for that.

The drive back home to Wolf Trap takes two hours with traffic. You remember every moment of it.

Hannibal is waiting for you when you get home. His eyes linger on you when you walk through the door. He looks like a predator, face blank but eyes glittering nefariously. 

Despite this, you feel in control, adrenaline flooding through your veins. You reach up slowly with trembling fingers. “You’re mine,” you say softly. You don’t expect him to respond. He is yours. You drew him from your mind, he is your creation, and you want him.

“As much as you’re mine,” he replies, but there is a puzzled expression on his face.

That’s cute, you think. This is not the first time you’ve hallucinated having sex with him, but perhaps it will be the first time for this incarnation of him that you have created. “I’m all yours,” you tell him, because you are, and because cracks open his expression for a moment, and even if it is all in your head, it is glorious.

When you crush your lips to his, he doesn’t taste like blood or flesh, but mint toothpaste. His fingers grip your arms with such force you are sure they will bruise. You distantly wonder if, to an outsider, you are merely gripping yourself.

He doesn’t dissect you this time. His fingers, though admittedly as scalpel sharp as you have ever imagined, do not pierce your skin. His fingers like nails rake across your skin gently, each touch a dangerous rub of power across your skin, and your flesh collapses into goose bumps everywhere he touches.

He leads you to your own bed, lays you upon it, and sucks red marks onto every inch of your skin like a pox. You writhe beneath him and he penetrates you with the sort of gentleness and civility you expect from Dr. Lector and not from the Chesapeake Ripper. His eyes tear into you as he fucks you, but his touch is so gentle that you deem it a caress even as it takes you to pieces. You don’t have lube (it has been a very long time since you have had sex in this house) but you do have a tub of Vaseline, and Hannibal seems to have no qualms with slicking himself with it.

It’s been a while since you’ve fingered yourself, but you appreciate how good the hallucination is making it feel.

He fucks you like you are made of porcelain, breakable and not just chipped. Each movement is precise, practiced, controlled. You imagine the nameless crowds who have known this pleasure before you, and you sigh. He stares at you as he fucks you, not a hair out of place, barely a drop of sweat at his hairline or nape. You feel naked, vulnerable.

You feel powerful.

He holds your arms down and out at your sides while you cum, like you are being crucified, and you struggle against him as you shake with it. Without the swelling in your brain, orgasm is more like a well needed nap than a religious experience, but it is better than nothing. Hannibal lays on top of you, still buried within you, and you can’t help but laugh, throwing your head back as you shake with it.

Before he has a chance to ask you anything, you say, “I told Jack about you today.”

The way his face twists comes as a shock to you, sudden fury and ugliness on a face usually stoic and stone hard. The hands that have so recently embraced your wrists and held them so tight are at your throat before you can move to stop them.

“You told Jack?” He is angrier than you’ve ever seen Hannibal, angrier than you thought you would be able to imagine him.

“Yes,” you say, “I had to.” You’re beginning to feel panicky and you try to raise yourself off the bed. He is snarling and pressing tighter and tighter against the bulge of your throat and your vision is beginning to narrow, filled with black splotches like an oil spill.

“Wait!” you gasp, and scrape at his hands. Your grip is weak, you can’t seem to release his hands. It’s probably your own hands. You are going to die in your own bed, strangling yourself to death. You sob, struggle for another breath. Your eyes are completely dark and you can’t take a breath, you can’t, you can’t. You feel his weight on your legs and it is only right before you pass out that it occurs to you.

You wake up in your cellar, hands and lips and ankles bound with duct tape, and no sign of Hannibal. You struggle against your bonds for a moment, but a sudden rush of apathy and sadness and sheer disbelief at your own lack of mindfulness. Besides, there is a throbbing in your head like back in those days when you would wake up drenched in sweat and hard from a nightmare of blood and taking people to pieces with a knife and your teeth. When you close your eyes you can’t help but wish Hannibal had pierced your flesh and let you die in his arms.

When you wake up you are in a hospital, and you have been trapped in your cellar for six days. Jack is called after you wake up but you are still bleary and tired and your muscles ache. 

“He was really there, wasn’t he?”

Jack gives you a look that you are sure he has practiced in a mirror; concern and compassion that barely mask how disappointed he is in you, in your mind, in your tremendous capacity for empathy.

“Yes, Will. He was.”

The nurse leaves a tan plastic tray for you, with some broth and a cup of tea and a bowl of jello. You realize you may never be able to trust your mind again, that everything you thought you were so sure of is wrong, is tainted, is covered in your sheer inability to recognize reality in front of you.

“It’s okay, Will. We’ll get him,” Jack says very seriously, in his best FBI voice.

He leaves. The broth and tea cool, the jello warms and begins to gather condensation.

You had sex with Hannibal. You want to laugh or cry. In the six days you’ve been out, your chest has begun to cave in again, the fat already falling off your limbs like it had in prison. You cannot trust your body. You cannot trust your mind. You’re not sure if you can trust Jack, your therapist, anyone (Hannibal).

The tray is sitting before you, cooling but nourishing.

Hannibal has left thick purple bruises around your throat that you can feel when you breathe and when you swallow, a new signature he has placed upon your flesh. You can trust nothing. You can imagine your flesh sagging all sinew and bone and rotting flesh how visible your pelvis will be when they find your body this is your design your hair falling out your stomach shrunk to the size of a plum this is your design you are cold everything will be cold and tight like a drum and still and silent. This is your design.

The hunger overwhelms you.

You do not eat.


End file.
